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Scapegoating and the Simulation of Mechanical Solidarity in Former Yugoslavia: “Ethnic Cleansing” and the Serbian Orthodox

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Scapegoating and the Simulation of Mechanical Solidarity in Former Yugoslavia: “Ethnic Cleansing” and the Serbian Orthodox Scapegoating and the Simulation of Mechanical Solidarity in Former Yugoslavia: “Ethnic Cleansing” and the Serbian Orthodox Church Keith Doubt Wittenberg University This essay is published under the above title in Humanity and Society (Vol. 31, No. 1, February 2007), 65-82. I would like to express my appreciation to Ron Berger for his insightful comments and editorial suggestions, as well as Matthew Lynch for his research assistance in the early stages of this study. Direct address correspondence to Keith Doubt, Department of Sociology, Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH 45501-0720 ([email protected]). 2 ABSTRACT In this paper I use the concept of scapegoating to explain the ritualized character of “ethnic cleansing” after the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I provide an overview of the political background behind these events, introduce the role and influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and analyze the collective violence known as ethnic cleansing through the concept of scapegoating. The Serbian Orthodox Church’s use of a scapegoat paradigm to incite violence created a pseudo-sense of solidarity among the Serbian people. Although this solidarity resembles Émile Durkheim’s concept of mechanical solidarity, I question the stability of this solidarity insofar as it is based on the negativity of war crimes and genocide. Implications for understanding collective violence in other areas such as the Middle East and Iraq are drawn by way of conclusion. REFLEXIVE STATEMENT My interest in the former Yugoslavia began in 1991. I was deeply disheartened by the disturbing reports of crimes against humanity. I started to organize sessions on Bosnia at sociology conferences in Canada and the United States. In 1998 I was invited to a conference on Democracy in Multi-Ethnic Societies and Human Rights in Konjic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and then the Bosnian Paradigm International Conference in Sarajevo. I befriended scholars with similar interests. In Spring 2000 I received a Fulbright Lecture Award at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Sarajevo. I have published several books in this area, most recently Understanding Evil: Lessons from Bosnia and am currently co-editor with Omer Hadžiselimović of the interdisciplinary, bilingual, online journal, Duh Bosne/Spirit of Bosnia, which can be found at http://www.spiritofbosnia.org. 3 In the late 1980s, with the break up of the former Yugoslavia, the Serbian government provoked a sense of collective victimization among the Serbian people for what had happened to them at the hands of the Germans and their fascistic Croatian allies during World War II. Anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Serbians were cruelly murdered, most notoriously at the concentration camp in Jasenovac. Serbian state-owned television showed the remains of victims in mass graves from World War II as they were ceremoniously exhumed and publicly displayed (Hayden 1994). The trauma of this legacy, as noted by Robert Hayden (1994), was used by the Serbian government to incite support for the campaign of collective violence that ensued between 1992 and 1995 against the non-Serbian people who had been the Serbs’ former neighbors, friends, and even relatives. Writing in September 1992, Hayden was prophetic when he observed that the adverse consequence of this violence would be felt not only by the non-Serbian victims but by the Serbian people as well: This second consequence must be bitter for Serbs, who will some day be forced to confront a painful truth: the hidden histories that the Serbian government revealed and propagated in 1991-92 were used to incite Serbs into committing atrocities rivaling those of their earlier . tormentors. Because of these atrocities, the legitimacy of the Serbian cause has been lost, and the Serb victims of the 1940’s, once honored dead, will be forgotten (p. 182). Hayden presciently lamented the sacrifice that the Serbian government forced upon the Serbian people. The righteous inheritance that stems from the suffering of the Serbian people during World War II had now been lost. Hayden predicted that memory of this suffering will inevitably 4 be supplanted by the memory of the victims in post-communist Yugoslavia (Honig and Both 1996). How were the Serbian people induced to sacrifice this historical legacy? What method of manipulation was used? What were the consequences of this manipulation for the Serbian people? This study describes the political background behind the activity euphemistically called “ethnic cleansing,” introduces the role and influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and then analyzes this state-inspired violence through the concept of scapegoating and its impact on the social solidarity of Serbian society. By way of conclusion, the study makes notable comparisons to other areas in the world. POLITICAL OVERVIEW The break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in a complex web of collective violence that is difficult to explain in a limited amount of space. Unlike other communist countries in Eastern European, Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito had been a relatively open society with progressive social values. It was a multiethnic state that consisted of a federation of six republics—Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (hitherto also referred to as Bosnia). Within Serbia, there were two autonomous providences, Kosovo and Vojvodina, with large non-Serbian populations. In face of the growing hegemony of Serbian nationalism and the tyrannical actions of Serbia’s president Slobodan Milošević, who took power in the late 1980s and began to assume unconstitutional dictatorial powers, Slovenia and Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia in June 1991. This secession, stirred by Slovenia’s and Croatia’s own nationalist aspirations, was permitted by the Yugoslavian constitution (Silber and Little 1996). After these secessions, the movement for independence within the republic of Bosnia- Herzegovina gained momentum as well. Bosnia was a multi-ethnic state composed of a 43 5 percent Bosnian Muslim, 30 percent Bosnian Serb or Orthodox, and 17 percent Bosnian Croat or Catholic, among other groups. It was a state that embraced its great cultural diversity. As such, it found itself increasingly at odds with the parochial and bigoted nationalism that was spreading throughout the former Yugoslavia. After seeking the counsel of various international organizations, including the United Nations, Bosnian leaders called for a national referendum on the secession question in March 1992. With a voter turnout of 64 percent, 98 percent voted in favor of independence. When President Alija Izetbegović subsequently declared Bosnia an independent state, the nationalist party of the Bosnian Serbs, the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) (which did not represent all Bosnian Serbs), refused to accept the outcome. Radovan Karadžić, the SDS leader, threatened in parliament (on videotape) the imminent extinction of Bosnian Muslims. Historically, Bosnians had established a civil order based on the assumption that Bosnia was more than “a collectivity of separate entities . [but] a historical entity which has its own identity and its own history” (Banac 1993:138-139). However, nationalist leaders in other Yugoslav republics sought to build nation-states based on an antithetical model grounded in the singular right of an exclusive ethnic group; they realized that they could not establish the nation- state they wanted without undermining the progressive Bosnia model (Mahmutčehajić 2000). Thus when Bosnia was formally recognized as an independent state, it was immediately attacked by Serbian militia and the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Army stationed within Bosnia itself. Political forces from Serbia and Montegnegro and later from Croatia agitated ethnic communities in Bosnia to turn against their “other” neighbors, which made the conflict look like a civil war. The goal of this military-political campaign, which came to be known as ethnic cleansing, was to partition Bosnia into ethnically homogeneous regions and divide the population that for centuries 6 had lived together in mixed and blended communities (Broz 2004; Donia and Fine 1994; Doubt 2000, 2006; Maass 1996; Malcolm 1996; Mahmutćehajić 2000; Silber and Little 1996). The anti-Bosnian efforts were resisted by many Bosnian citizens from every ethnic group who had progressively and traditionally remained loyal to the ideal of a multi-ethnic state (Broz 2004). Bosnia, with its traditions of multiculturalism, had been a respected model for other republics. In the major cities of the republic, the number of bi-ethnic marriages had been close to 40 percent. Tito’s vision of a progressive multi-ethnic society was internalized in Bosnia more than the other republics. Bosnians thought of themselves in terms of both their national identity as Yugoslav citizens and their ethnic identity, which for many was not mutually exclusive but mixed. During the sadistic war that ensued in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, close to a quarter of a million people were killed, a quarter of a million maimed, and a quarter of million held in concentration camps. Two and a quarter million, half the population of Bosnia were driven from their homes (Broz 2002). People were forced to live in foreign countries or resettle in areas that were unnaturally made ethnically homogeneous. In a country of four-and-a-half million inhabitants, the human casualties and social costs of ethnic cleansing were thus immense, though arguably the
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